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Some More Thoughts on #GamerGate and Feminism

So Saturday night, I got caught up in a twitter conversation with a few feminists over feminism and #GamerGate. Now, to get a picture of where I come from on #GamerGate, I wrote this previous piece. I decided to engage a feminist on twitter about the nature of feminism. The conversation began innocently enough when I simply pointed out that #GamerGate is not reactionary, but in fact progressive. To no one’s surprise, people immediately began dogpiling me as if I had said that the earth was flat.

Of course, I explained myself. Without giving myself away and linking to my own piece, I explained things from what I saw: #GamerGate was one group of feminists rising up to deconstruct the current feminist establishment. Brianna Wu Anita Sarkeesian, and Zoe Quinn along with their games media allies are the status quo of feminism in video games, and #GamerGate is the new movement aiming to alter it. Needless to say, the responses proved me correct. I’ll paraphrase my favorite response:

“Appealing to the patriarchy doesn’t help feminism; it just hurts its victims!”

And yet, what is the endgame of feminism? How do they expect to achieve their goals of a glorious, egalitarian utopia? Do they expect for there to be mass social change without the consent of the general public? If your movement is bringing about change, even positive change, without the enthusiastic consent that your group champions, what moral standing can you claim? The general mechanism of social change that progressives rely upon is infiltration and subversion. A progressive almost always brings change from the inside. They find a way to be acceptable and respected by society, then use that position of influence to enact social change. Women’s suffrage came about through the Suffragettes agreeing to support Wilson with World War I. Martin Luther King Jr. worked hard to be the god-fearing all-American face of the civil rights movement instead of, say, Bayard Rustin.

Right now, feminism has an image problem. People are rejecting feminist ideology en masse because it’s hardly palatable. Wendy Davis is going to flop in Texas.(1) Lena Dunham just got exposed as a child molester.(2) FEMEN continues to be a hilarious trainwreck all across Europe.(3) Much like what people try to say about #GamerGate, feminism at this point is a tainted brand. Feminists aren’t even funny- a single look at “Weird Twitter” could tell you that. #GamerGate is feminism correcting itself: rather than being aggressive conceited, and self-righteous it is becoming more diplomatic, more level-headed, and more marketable. Again, it’s the evolution of the Cathedral. Since society cannot be FORCED into being more progressive, society will be PERSUADED into being more progressive.

I guess the best way to sum all this up would be to return to the Cathedral/Cthulhu analogy. Right now, some of Cthulhu’s most vocal cultists are starting to realize that they’ve lost their god’s favor. They got complacent, and Great Cthulhu abhors complacency. They’re being phased out and they know it, hence the screaming and gnashing of teeth. Even Anita Sarkeesian herself knows it- she threw Suey Park under the bus to get on Colbert, and has no recognizable ties anymore to Zoe Quinn or Brianna Wu. Hell, game journalism as a whole is no longer useful to her. In conclusion, I hope that the feminists defending Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu start making peace with the TERFs- you’re about to join them soon enough.